Page:The Praises of Amida, 1907.djvu/21

Rh us up. When we think of it our weak hearts fail us, and we tremble for terror.

3. It is not only about the past and the future that we are absolutely ignorant: we know nothing even of the present. Day by day we get up, we go to bed, we move about, we take our rest. And then we die. No one lives the same life over again, and we do not know why we live it at all. Some hold that the end of existence is happiness, others that it is progress. Can it, however, be said that there is such a things as true happiness in the world? In the midst of joy we are overwhelmed with sorrow: behind pleasure you always find some lurking pain, and the shifting breezes of Impermanency, sweeping over this world, shrivel up the fair flowers of happiness, as the Morning Glory shrivels under the Rising Sun.

Or, perhaps, you will say that progress is the end of existence, and that its ultimate aim is something that is above us. When clouds drift over the sky, they really move neither backwards nor forwards. And we, whose Future is all